Tag Archives: Sweden

Topics: Rep. Steve Scalise, US policy on Cuba and North Korea, Islamophobia in Sweden and Germany. People: Bill, Nate. Produced: January 5th, 2015.

Discussion Points:

– Why House Majority Whip Steve Scalise is at least a White supremacist sympathizer, despite his sketchy denials — and what that means for the Republican Party now.
– What does the US policy change on Cuba mean for both countries? Should the US also adjust policies on North Korea?
– Why are Germany and Sweden witnessing a surge of anti-Muslim public actions?

Sweden’s ruling center-left government, elected only in September and led by the Social Democratic Party, will live to fight another day after reaching a deal with the mainstream center-right opposition (led by the so-called “Moderate Party”) to support the Moderate Party’s proposed budget this year instead of their own but avoid going to early elections. The extreme right was expected to make big gains if elections were held within just six months of their last big jump and less than a year after their big performance in EU elections.

This is a bad deal but probably still worth taking, at least in the short term. It’s worth taking in that it avoids that dangerous election and will commit the mainstream opposition to supporting the government’s budgets through 2022, after this one. But it’s bad in that adopting the opposition’s proposed budget even this year is kind of the opposite of what is supposed to happen when they lose an election and it effectively constitutes political extortion (much like U.S. Republicans extorting concessions for vital debt ceiling increase votes).

In the long run, that means the mainstream left is likely to lose even more support for being “sellouts,” while the mainstream right continues to be extremely unpopular. The only clear upside, besides the immediate prevention of a risky snap vote, is that it pushes the next election out to 2022 and avoids several future budget showdowns, which is still a better outcome than most recent U.S. budget and debt ceiling fights.

What should have happened here is either a Grand Coalition between the two biggest mainstream parties or the main center-right party holding their noses to vote through a center-left budget instead of trying to tank it, as they did. That’s what a losing but responsible conservative party would do to avoid strengthening the far-right, particularly in a week that saw 2 different mosques attacked by Swedish extremists trying to burn people alive and vandalize property.

Instead, the “Moderate Party” extorted the ruling Social Democrats (and Green Party) by demanding their budget proposal be adopted anyway. Their budget is, in fact, the polar opposite of what the Swedish population has been demanding and had been a factor in the rise of the extreme right.

In the last 8 years, Sweden became the economy with the fastest growing income inequality in the industrialized world. The previous, Moderate-led center-right coalition government in Sweden pursued not just an austerity agenda — like many of their peers (on both sides of the center) across Europe during the recent crisis — but they also pursued an aggressive effort to roll back government services and programs and introduce private sector participation in functions traditionally managed by the Swedish state.

Although some of the policies were introduced in the 1990s, they were ramped up even more in recent years. In particular, Swedish government attempts to privatize and voucherize public education — along the lines promoted by many right-leaning education “reformers” in the United States — devolved into a mess. One recent poll, by Gothenburg University’s SOM Institute, found that ahead of the September elections 70% of the country was opposed to the privatization and corporate subsidy schemes of the Moderate Party government that subsequently lost.

In the September general election, the mainstream center-left Social Democrats won the most seats in Sweden’s parliament, but they also finished with one of the party’s lowest vote shares of any election held after the 1909 reform that granted male workers the right to vote. That’s because many of the seats previously won by the mainstream center left and right were lost to smaller parties. Most notably, a far-right, anti-immigrant party, the Swedish Democrats became the third biggest party in Swedish politics.Read more

The ruling center-right coalition pursued not just an austerity agenda, like many of their peers (on both sides of the center) across Europe during the recent crisis, but in Sweden they also pursued an aggressive effort to roll back government services and programs and introduce private sector participation in functions traditionally managed by the state. Although some of the policies were introduced in the 1990s, they were ramped up even more in recent years. In particular, Swedish government attempts to privatize and voucherize public education — along the lines promoted by many right-leaning education “reformers” in the United States — devolved into a mess. One recent poll, by Gothenburg University’s SOM Institute (cited by The Guardian article linked above), found that 70% of the country is opposed to the privatization and corporate subsidy schemes of the current center-right government.

After 8 years in opposition, the Social Democrats are projected to win the most seats in today’s election and take control of parliament via a left-leaning coalition. Their party leader and likely next prime minister is a former welder and union leader who has never even been elected to parliament before. But the irony is that this win (though slightly better than opinion polls had projected) will come with one of the party’s lowest vote shares of any election held after the 1909 reform that granted male workers the right to vote. Why? Despite the broad-based opposition to the current, right-leaning government’s policy agenda, the opposition has been diffuse and did not benefit one party (such as the Social Democrats) alone.

Much of the anger has gone toward the even more leftist parties — such as the Green Party, Left Party, and Feminist Initiative — who will likely join the coalition government with the Social Democrats if they win seats. If any of the outlying left parties don’t meet a minimum 4% vote share threshold — and it appears that Feminist Initiative received less than that — those leftist votes could be tossed out, essentially wasting them, unfortunately. That would be less of a problem if it weren’t for the alarming alternative that might take the seats instead when votes for parties below the threshold are eliminated.

On the other side of the electorate, some of the populist anger in Sweden has further fueled the rise of a far-right, anti-immigrant party, the Swedish Democrats. The racist and inflammatory Swedish Democrats — who have attempted to run ultra-populist ads openly accusing Muslims of stealing resources from the welfare system﻿ — had no such trouble hitting their vote threshold to remain in parliament, which they entered for the first time four years ago. Here’s an Al Jazeera report:

With all voting districts tallied by Monday morning, the Social Democrat-led bloc won 43.7 percent of the vote while the ruling centre-right coalition, led by the Moderate Party, gained 39.3 percent.

But the anti-immigration far-right Sweden Democrats were celebrating large gains as the party won 12.9 percent of votes cast – more than doubling the 5.7 percent of votes won in the 2010 election.

Neither mainstream party will allow the Swedish Democrats into a coalition government, but with the fragmentation that occurred on the left, and the small size of the non-extreme parties on the right, the Swedish Democrats may hold the balance of power in parliament anyway unless a grand left-right coalition or minority government arrangement is worked out. And that would make no one happy, in light of the rebuke given to the center-right in this election.

As we’ve covered before on this site, European mainstream politics right now are facing a very serious challenge from both a splintering but growing far-left as well as a dangerously solidifying, growing, and extreme far-right.

Although the far-right Swedish Democrats won their first seats in Sweden’s national parliament back in 2010, they also won 2 seats in the EU parliament this year, amid a continent-wide wave of sometimes extreme populism. That EU vote share in Sweden of almost 10% for the Swedish Democrats helped their momentum going into this national election and boosted them to just under 13%. And also like we saw across most of Europe at the EU elections in May 2014, the Swedish centrist parties and center-right parties were decimated in the results tonight, to the benefit of the far-right as well as an umbrella of parties on the left.

I spoke tonight with Etienne Borocco, a national counselor of the Union of Democrats and Independents, a centrist party in France, who previously wrote Arsenal For Democracy’s analysis of the 2014 European Union election results and the rising populist tide (both left and right) in Europe this year. Borocco told me the following about the national election results in Sweden today:

The gains by Swedish Democrats are one more demonstration of European apathy and disaffection. The world is very frightening for Europeans now with the economic/currency crisis and the explosive geopolitical context. Moreover, the welfare state is decreasing because of spending cuts. When you mix high unemployment, downgrading the welfare state, and unresolved asylum issues, you have apathy as the result.

So between apathy with the system / existing parties and enthusiasm among those seeking easy but dangerous answers, we have the left growing but splitting its votes and the extreme right-wing unifying into a dangerous political force. It’s similar to some of what we have seen in recent years in the United States but is perhaps much more visible in a multi-party system with far higher rates of voter participating (in some cases, mandatory). And as he pointed out, the depth and duration of the economic crunch in Europe, crossed with the resulting cutbacks of government spending and jobs, has put a lot of voters in the mood to vote for anybody but the mainstream parties when they head to the polls. That is the space exploited to allow parties like the Swedish Democrats to make big gains.

Though more recently known for its relative impartiality and determined neutrality (during World War II, they wedged themselves peacefully between occupied Denmark and Norway, and bitterly contested Finland), Sweden was once a powerful northern European empire dominating (or attacking) Norway, Finland, Denmark, the German states, Poland, the Baltic States, and Russia.

During the Thirty Years War of the 17th century, the Swedish Empire captured half the principalities of the Holy Roman Empire and sent colonists to the Mid-Atlantic in North America. Those days are long gone, and in Baltic Europe, Russia picked up a lot of the slack in the vacuum left by a receding Sweden in the 18th and 19th centuries.

In the post-World War II era, Sweden has maintained a relatively small military but tried to stay out of foreign entanglements, apart from some peacekeeping missions in Africa or international non-combat military roles, such as in Libya or Afghanistan.

Right about now, though, the Swedes seem to be wishing they were back to their old imperial glory days — or the next best thing: being a NATO member, something they previously have had no interest in. If Russia’s going back to the no-rules imperialism of yore, Sweden would like to be protected.

Non-aligned since the early 19th century, Sweden’s “splendid isolation” has endured two world wars and even the five-decade superpower slugfest that dominated the late 20th century. That could change, however, in the wake of Russia’s intervention in Ukraine. Last week, Swedish Finance Minister Anders Borg indicated that the defense budget, to which he had recently announced cuts, would be increased as a result of the crisis. Deputy Prime Minister Jan Björklund also publicly floated the idea of Swedish membership in NATO, warning that Russia could attempt to seize Gotland, a strategically located Swedish island province in the Baltic Sea, if it chose to attack the Baltic states of Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania.

Without international military help, Sweden’s military publicly believes it could hold out in an all-out conventional war for only one week. NATO membership brings a guarantee of international defense if attacked. So right now the old neutrality plan, translating to the go-it-alone approach, is looking pretty dicey.

Russia was legally committed to uphold Ukraine’s neutrality and blew right through that stop sign. What’s to stop them from going after Gotland? International norms seem to be a voluntary thing for Russia these days.

Update: Following the September 2014 parliamentary elections, the incoming government (from the center-left) abandoned the previous government’s idea of having Sweden join NATO.

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